Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Days of Rage - an Egyptian Melt Down

Everyone is concerned about the coup d’état by
the Egyptian military.Of course, no-one
is calling it a coup but it is difficult to describe a situation where the
elected government of a country is replaced, by force, with an unelected
government as anything other than that.The media are full of excited speculation about the direction the
violent confrontation will take. No doubt as the death toll rises they will
become even more energized and speculative about the probable direction of the
conflict. This is not about democracy
but about a venomous identity and Western support for a failed extremist theology.

Debate is polarized because the facts presented by pundits are no more than entrenched political ideological
positions and therefore, they are not truths but passionately held theories at
risk of being shown to be false.

No wonder the experts are so agitated. It is
difficult to generate excitement about Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks where a
news blackout is in place to prevent either side from grandstanding in order to
undermine the talks.There are no natural disasters to take our
minds off the tedium of our cyclical weather.And wars are thankfully uncommon in the 21st Century. And so we are left with Egypt. Because, save for Syria, nothing much else is
happening in the world. Therefore, everyone will offer their sage advice without really
contributing anything honest to the discussion.

We could be presumptive and view the whole exercise
since the January 25 Revolution in 2011 overthrew the regime of President Hosni
Mubarak as the military giving the Muslim Brotherhood plenty of rope to hang
itself.They certainly did that.

The Egyptian Military allegedly own around a
third of the Egyptian economy.Following
the 1952 Revolution by that same military they have continued to exercise
control in a country that has a relatively diverse economic base and therefore,
the potential to sustain the economy irrespective of the upheavals that global
events create internationally.But the most
powerful rival that the military faces is the Muslim Brotherhood. It is an
Egyptian creation, having been founded in Egypt in 1928 and it has remained
influential, feared and for much of that time, banned. When not banned it was tolerated
and encouraged in its social work which alleviated poverty for many Egyptians,
fostering obedience rather than helping anyone to actually leave poverty
behind them.

The Brotherhood is a conservative, Islamic
movement that is fundamentally intolerant of any vision other than its own narrow
Islamic one. It has been happy to encourage others to create chaos even as it
remains on the sidelines, often providing condemnation of violence while
tacitly approving of those that carry it out.Quite simply, the greater the chaos, the more people flock to its cause.Islamic social and political justice, a destiny
of conquest and rejection of a Western identity deemed corrupt, this is the
dream. And it is the vision for a purified Islam, untainted by foreign
influences.Its nativist approach is by
theological design ethnocentric and wholly bigoted.

While not all Muslim Brotherhood movements have
been reactionary they are the exception, not the rule.

Morsi never had his eye on the economy.He took the country from being a natural gas
exporter to a state that this year needed to import gas.Fuel shortages sent food prices soaring in a
country where estimates of the population vary from a low of 80 million to a
high of 90 million. And it has almost two million new mouths to feed born each
year.Over 50% of the population are
under the age of 25 and
13.5% are unemployed (although the percentage is much higher for the young who
despair of any kid of positive future) see: CIA World Factbook. Morsi was more concerned
with consolidating power than feeding his people.

And here lies the crux of the problem. A
movement that sees progress as a contagion and views its purpose as a return to
the period of the brutal founding of its faith, in the seventh Century CE, can be relatively
successful (as it has in Iran
and Turkey) if it controls
the nations’ resources (which in Egypt they did not) and if it is
capable of running the country. But the Muslim Brotherhood rushed headlong
towards economic catastrophe and did not seem concerned with the damage it
caused. Recent forecasts of Egyptian
food needs are horrifying.Egypt
imports 80% of its grain needs and 60% of its total food requirements.It is expected to run out of both food reserves
and cash before the end of 2013. With the overthrow of the Morsi regime this
nightmare scenario may now be delayed by an emergency loan of twelve billion
dollars provided by the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia

Starvation, violence, anarchy and
terrorism are the dangers that lie barely beneath the surface of Egyptian
society. The danger lies in the oft quoted example of Algeria. After
the generals cancelled the 1991 election victory of the Islamic Salvation Front
(FIS) a civil war was ignited that ultimately killed between 50,000 and 200,000
and was witness to whole villages being slaughtered. The Muslim Brotherhood is patient but it has
never been a particularly pleasant winner; it is an even worse loser. When the
"Arab Spring" came to Egypt,
the Muslim Brotherhood took control of Tahrir Square and sexual harassment,
abuse, and rape of women skyrocketed.

83% of Egyptian women have
experienced sexual harassment, but 98% of foreign female visitors have suffered
an often worse fate if, they dared to appear in public. In Tahrir Square after the revolution,
organized rape of women became common place and this was somehow justified
through the accusation that the ‘accused’ women were Coptic Christians, or
Foreigners.

If the will of the people is
something we should all respect then similarly we should respect the arbitrary
sexual violence of the Egyptian Revolution, it’s burning down of churches, the ethnic
cleansing of the Christian minority and its incitement against Israel.Certainly, the world’s major newspapers have
had a hard time coming to terms with the fall from power of the Muslim
Brotherhood.

At the time of the July 3rd coup
against President Morsi, the world’s major “quality” newspapers were all
horrified by the overthrow of Egypt’s
first democratically elected president without considering the damage he had
done to Egypt
or why he failed.

The April 6 Movement that preceded the
Revolution to overthrew President Mubarak made their own progressive demands
for change.But their platform did not
tackle the strategic issues inherent within Arab society of triumphalism and jingoism
(which by definition seeks, by belligerent endeavor, the acquisition of power
and dominance through a focus on chauvinistic enterprises.) The international
Press romanticized popular enthusiasm for change by referring to the youthful
exuberance of the protesters ‘camping out’ in Tahrir Square but it was still
change within an historical framework that was willing to ride to power on the
back of popular prejudice.

True revolutionaries are bigots who willingly
sacrifice others for their cause even as they demand real change.This summer, Tamarod, the successor to the
April 6 Movement likewise, took to the streets to demand a ‘return’ to so
called ‘liberal’ democracy.They
overthrew President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government. They also called
for the cancellation of the peace treaty with Israel – a demand that the Muslim
Brotherhood saw as desirable but placed on a wish list far, far away.In celebration of the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan a virulently racist TV serial was broadcast across the Arab (and
wider?) Muslim world. As the Morsi overthrow sunk in, initially, Muslims destroyed 40
churches and severely damaged 28 others.

Nations that willingly embrace violence and
hate; that demand greater respect for their ‘values’ while showing not the
slightest interest in reciprocation or in fact, of reforming their own hate
filled societies have no right to make demands of us.And yet, on the eve of his first trip to the United States, President Mohamed Morsi
instructed the United States
to show greater respect for Arab values.Turkey
has told its citizens and their descendants living throughout the European
Community they are first and foremost, Turkish Muslims.Negative reciprocity is a marker for Islamic
relations with the non-Muslim world; generosity and kindness are not.It is always easier to blame a traditional
foe for ones own failures.

The Jewish faith teaches that there was a
beginning and that we should look forward, not back.Perhaps this is Islam’s greatest weakness (as
well as its greatest strength). Everything is referenced to the past, not as a
guide to the future but as a model of unchallengeable and therefore,
unchangeable perfection.If the
embodiment of all that is to be aspired towards took place 1,400 years ago, at
a time of Muslim savagery and conquest then the failure to complete that
conquest with equal or even greater murderous cruelty must have its non-Islamic scapegoat.

We can be sure that there will be many
conspiracy theories surrounding the failure of the Morsi era. It lasted less than a year.But the one thing Egypt will not
do is to seriously address the internal dysfunction and prejudice that has made
it unable to overcome centuries of malevolent mediocrity.

Free and fair elections brought fascism to
power in Egypt
and in the West too many cheered the result.A recent article asked whether democracy was a process or a result. In
fact, democracy is a state of mind.It
is not a favor that is granted and one that may be diminished by special
interest groups but an inalienable right. It is tolerance for widely divergent
opinions; respect for everyone, even ones enemies; it is checks and balances
and then and only then, a press and judiciary that is free from fear or
interference. But most important of all, democracy works because it rejects the
demagogue and practices emotional control on an individual and group
basis.The election of a fundamentalist party
to power was a vote for fascism. In
contradiction to the accepted view, it was a failure of democracy.

Respecting Arab values will neither feed the
Arab masses nor will it save the defenseless Arab (or non-Arab) woman from her
groping and predatory Arab master. But in the Western World choosing sides is
unpopular, unless it is against America or Zionism (i.e.
Jewish Israel).

And that is why there will be no meaningful
discussion of the failure of the Arab Spring or of the nature of the illness
that afflicts Egypt.